The News

Web Site Showcases
American Detective Fiction

Posting all Detective Fiction
Prior to Conan Doyle

Fully Searchable

The mission of the Westminster Detective Library to catalog and make available online all the short fiction dealing with detectives and detection published in the United States before Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia” (1891).

This site grew out of research for the anthology Early American Detective Stories (McFarland 2008) that I edited with my mentor and colleague LeRoy Lad Panek (1943-2021), winner of two Edgar awards for his contributions to the scholarly field of detective criticism. We uncovered a treasure-trove of forgotten and previously unavailable detective stories, many more than could be included in a single anthology. And so this on-going project was born.

The site includes a working bibliography; full-text copy of entries are added as they are prepared. A few stories that were published in Britain but which appear to have been previously published in America have also been included and are indicated by an asterisk in the bibliography. I welcome comments and solicit both additional bibliographical entries and texts.

Mary M. Bendel-Simso, editor

Select Story

The Ghost of the Old Catholic Cemetery

by Allan Pinkerton

It would be a surprise to the general public if the records of all my offices could be thrown open for inspection, so that it might be observed what a wide range has been covered in investigations which I have been called upon to undertake—the mysteries to unravel, or crimes to prevent or unearth. It must not be supposed that the services of my agencies are wholly devoted to criminal matters. Some of the most important legal contests of the times have been decided in accordance with the irresistible array of evidence which a small army of my men have quietly, keenly, and patiently secured; while the operation of immense business interests, like banking, insurance, and railway matters, have often been interrupted by seemingly inextricable confusion and complexity, which threatened great loss, until my services were asked; and by my thorough and complete system, through which almost general and instant communication and information can be secured, I have been enabled to bring order out of chaos, and prevent what might have otherwise resulted in commercial ruin to my patrons. As the individual detective’s notice must be brought to everything great and small upon any investigation he may be conducting, so is it true that the principal of a large system of detective agencies must be so situated that he may consider and receive every possible variety of business—always expecting that which is disreputable—and then have means at his command to carry each case, may it be great or… Read More

Miscellany

The Detective of the Present -- Finn and Jourdan

Time was when a detective was a man who detected things. A detective is still that in some European countries; and he still detects things—in novels. There's Buckett in “Bleak House” who detects Lady Dedlook, and there's that detective in Collin’s story of the “Moon Stone,” quite a detector. New York used to have Old Hayes, who could detect a thing or two; Paris has had Vidocq, and Bow street has had Forster.* But the race has died out entirely in America, and is dying out in England.

Commissioner Jourdan, of Brooklyn, has been making an effort to raise up a detective or two and has actually produced Corr and Bill. Corr and Bill were raised to the Vidocquian task of tracing a mystic murder. Finnan is a hatter; and Finnan has been in States Prison. That ought to be enough for any detective such as Corr to concluded that Finnan did the deed. Edgar A. Poe could not reason out a conclusion clearer than that. So Corr went to where Finnan was making hats.

Is Finnan here? Yes—want to see him?